


The Queen of Pretend

by absentminded_artist



Category: Harlots (TV)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Charlotte's POV, Eventual Romance, Family, Inner Dialogue, Multi, Revenge, Season 2
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-09-07
Updated: 2019-02-13
Packaged: 2019-07-08 06:32:48
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 7,251
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15924839
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/absentminded_artist/pseuds/absentminded_artist
Summary: "You will learn to be The Queen of Pretend as I am." Those were the words Charlotte had spoken to her younger sister the night their mother had sold her virginity.  Now she is determined to make the woman who made ever speaking those words necessary pay for the pain of her family. She'd broken her own heart to get this chance. Pushed away a good, earnest man and chosen vengeance. She will have it. No matter the cost.





	1. Episode 1, Part 1

**Author's Note:**

> Charlotte Wells has been an actress all her life. It is second nature to her, playing the game of harlotry. But this is by far the most dangerous stage she has ever played on.
> 
> Charlotte's inner monologue throughout Season 2.

Charlotte brushes white powder across her face, finishing the last touches on the exterior of her harlot's mask. Everything from her blush to the placement of velvet patches, to the curls of hair that fall over her shoulders and brush the tops of her breasts, is meticulously crafted.In a rare moment of quiet, sitting alone in her room in Golden Square, no cull to entertain and no Lydia Quigley to fool, she has the time to sit with her own thoughts.The parts of her that exist under the layers of masks. 

She considers her reflection in the mirror and emptiness she can see behind her eyes scares her.It's been less than two months since she told Daniel Marney that she couldn't love or be loved and she believes it now even more than she did then.He had loved her and she was grateful to him for it. She was almost sure a part of her had loved him in return.His love had been her treasure, if only briefly.Perhaps if circumstances had been different, she would have grown to love him as steadfastly as he did her.Still, she had meant what she had said at their farewell. If it is demented thinking, so be it. Her world is a demented one. She cannot live in it, she can not do what she must now do, and allow herself to be soft. 

She has always been pragmatic, but now her pragmaticism takes on another dimension. She is a creature fueled by a cold desire for revenge. By a hatred that has been growing inside her since she was twelve. It is all she has. The hatred. It is what will drive her to tear down Golden Square and bury Lydia Quigley in its rubble. She'd broken her own heart to get this chance. Pushed away a good, earnest man and chosen vengeance. She will have it. No matter the cost.

From her boudoir, she can hear the sounds of afternoon's entertainments going on in the large drawing room below. All of Quigley's girls are down there, dressed in romanesque garb and placed into tableau to entertain wealthy culls. Some weak chinned baronet and his retinue flush with coinage and hungry for female flesh. 

Charlotte has no part in it when she can contrive an escape. She will have to go down eventually, but she is not a doll to be positioned and gawked at. She has her agency. Lydia has kept to the terms she had offered when she had first brought Charlotte to Golden Square after freeing her from jail. Charlotte has her freedom, she chooses her own culls, and not one coin of her earnings go to the bawd. If it were not in the company of a she-devil, the situation could almost have resembled an ideal. No keeper. No real bawd. Wholly her own person. But it is all an illusion. She is not her own person here. Not by any stretch of the imagination. She is whatever person Lydia Quigley needs her to be. She will faun love and loyalty on a woman whose throat she wishes to rip out.

Finally content with her appearance, she leaves her room, locks the door behind her, and descends the grand staircase that leads into the front hall. Enough of contemplating the game. It is time for Charlotte Wells to play.   
  
There is a man standing at the landing with his back to her. His plain dress reveals him to be not of the class that generally frequents Golden Square. _Interesting_ , she thinks.  _That's not something you see here every day._ He seems a very different breed of man from the ones currently being catered to.But he is here, as they are.In some ways, all men are the same.

He turns as she is halfway down the staircase.

"Lydia Quigley?" he asks.   
  
"Charlotte Wells," she replies archly.

"W-w-what's your position in the house?"

Charlotte smirks as she descends. "Upright, side-saddle, bare-back, recumbent," she lists off, circling him, enjoying the effect she has on his composure. This is the game she is good at. "What's yours?”

Before he can reply, or even think of a reply, Lydia herself sweeps into the room in a cloud of silk and powder. 

"I'm more than delighted to meet you. Congratulations on your rise." She says.  
  
Charlotte moves backward to watch. So this is the new Justice. The man who replaced Cunliffe.  _How long it will be before Lydia has him eating out of her hand_  she wonders. This house feeds on the corruption of the law. Cunliffe had been a shining example of this fact. Or a filthy one, depending on where you stood. And with him dead, Quigley will be aiming for new allies in the court.   
  
Charlotte is brought out of her reverie by hearing herself become the topic of the conversation in front of her.

"I see you've met my fair adventuress, Miss Wells," Quigley says, motioning to where Charlotte is now sitting on the arm of a gilded sofa.  
  
Charlotte resists the urge to roll her eyes. Adventuress indeed. She's the only girl here with the freedom to “adventure.” Not that half these painted china dolls would know what to do if let out from under the thumb of Mrs. Quigley.

"Forgive me," the Justice says, "I don't squander words. What might you provide for me?" 

  
His words seem to be seeking services, but there is something about him that Charlotte doesn't quite trust. And nearly a decade and a half as a whore has taught her to trust her instincts over the words of men every time.

"Here, you will find rest, respite, rejuvenation." Lydia Quigley tells him in what Charlotte recognizes as her most ingratiating tone of address. A vague answer if ever Charlotte heard one.

"A little more than that, I think?"   
  
"In my house, a man's desires are met with unrestrained and willing grace."  
  
Quigley's drift of innuendo is interrupted as one of her toga-clad girls runs through the hall and up the stairs, followed by a cull. Charlotte listens as Lydia tries to assure the new Justice that her house is usually more tranquil. That is a mild way of putting it. The girls here are usually docile to the point of mindlessness.   
  
"May I guess your taste?" Lydia continues, sizing the man up, "You like sincerity, perhaps a little modesty. Even" she turns to call over her shoulder, "Miss Pettifer."

The justice stutters as Anne, also clad in a toga appears in the hall.  _Always eager to please_  Charlotte thinks. Part of her pities the girl. Quigley is more ready to buy her own false love over Anne's genuine loyalty.

"Or is Miss Wells a fitting match for you? Charlotte smiles at him but is unimpressed. She had not been given a cull by the bawd yet and she does not intend to start today. She doubts he could afford her anyway.

Lydia continues, moving ever closer to the Justice, "I sense a man who likes an element of risk,” she hisses.   
  
Charlotte thinks this man looks as if he has never taken a risk in his entire life.   
  
"Choose your pleasure." Quigley once again motions to Charlotte who remains seated, and Anne, who curtseys.  


The man reaches into his pocket and withdraws a folded paper. "Lydia Quigley, this is a warrant for your arrest as a keeper of a b-b-bawdy and disorderly house!"  
  
Charlotte wants to laugh out loud. Lydia does laugh, her voice grating in its mockery as she claps her hands together in amusement. Though whether it is genuine or for show Charlotte has yet to learn the difference.

"You're trying to gull me," she exclaims "I'm no common bawd!”

"And I'm no common fool." he counters.

Charlotte stands then, turning to Anne who is still standing at attention by her side. "Anne, look to the girls," she tells her. She can feel the situation spiraling out of control.   
  
The Justice raises his voice, addressing the constables that Charlotte notices for the first time. "Find out if any girl is here against her will." he commands, "And I want the name of every man before you t-turn him out."  
  
The men heed his words and storm the drawing room as commotion erupts.

"This is this is unheard of! Insupportable!" Lydia cries.

Indeed, Charlotte cannot remember a time when Golden Square has seen the short end of the law. She moves closer to Lydia, "When it happened to Ma," she whispers, "It was nothing but a fine. I'll make sure the girls are loyal and you'll soon placate him."  
_  
A fine that cost my sister her innocence twice over._  She thinks. Another nail in the coffin.If only this fine could take from Lydia Quigley what it had taken from Charlotte’s family.It won’t, she knows, but perhaps it could serve her in another way. 

Lydia screams in frustration as two guards reappear to escort her from the house. Charlotte follows her out the front door and watches as she enters the carriage. She nods to her as to affirm her plan to uphold the house. No doubt Quigley will have the money for the fine together as soon as it is levied. But the brush with peril may just give her the in she needs to "prove" her devotion to the woman. Charlotte had spoken for her Ma in court, and if it a loyal daughter Quigley wants, a loyal daughter to her Charlotte will be.

Only when the carriage has pulled far enough away does she allow herself to grin. "Well, fuck my old boots,” she says, and turns back into the house.  
  
Inside, the girls are all in a flutter over the shock of their bawd and culls being led away. 

Anne comes up to her in the hall.

"Shall I lock them in their rooms?" She asks.  
  
_And this,_ Charlotte thinks, _is why Lydia will never favorite Anne._ The girl has no mind of her own. Lydia desires loyalty, yes, but also spark; and Anne is duller than old Mrs. Scanwell's sight. Pretty as a peach, but empty.

"No, take them out," Charlotte tells her.

Anne looks shocked at the mere suggestion of moving without her bawd. "That isn't safe."

"We have to show the world this house remains undaunted." the only thing Lydia Quigley will like less than seeing the inside of a courtroom where she does not have the upper hand, is if her business were to flounder while she was there.

"Then you take them out," Anne replies indignantly.

"Gladly," Charlotte smiles, "if you go to the jailhouse."  
  
Anne makes a disgusted face at this suggestion.

"Then do as I propose," Charlotte tells her, walking away to get her things to go out. God, seeing Lydia Quigley locked in a rotting jail cell will just make her day. She hadn't even thought before to hope that the new Justice might actually work against Quigley rather than falling in step with his corrupt predecessor.   
  
Still, there was no way it would be as simple as this.  Even if Charlotte were not to facilitate the payment of Quigley’s fine, whatever the sentenced levied at the woman would not come near enough retribution for all she had to pay for. Charlotte would have to continue to play her long game.  And to do that, she first needed to play savior for the devil.


	2. Episode 1, Part 2

Just as Charlotte is about to leave Golden Square, the front door opens revealing Charles Quigley and his whore Emily Lacey on the doorstep.Or rather, Emily Lacey and her whore Charles Quigley.Charlotte can’t help but sneer at them, puffed up beyond their right. 

“So the vultures are gathering,” she says, laughing. 

Though honestly, Charlotte doesn’t quite know how to feel about Emily Lacey.The girl had been nearly killed by Quigley’s schemes, but she took her money readily enough.And she had run to the she-devil to begin with, knowing what Lydia Quigley was from Charlotte’s Ma.And after it all, she had traded her silence for a nice house and some fancy dresses. She thinks she’s safe. That she can play the devil and win. _She will be ruined as surely as the rest of us if I fail._ Charlotte thinks.

Emily returns Charlotte’s laugh with a smug look of her own, “He’s here to chuck the cuckoo out of his nest.” she says, gesturing at Charles.

Charlotte rolls her eyes.The idea of Charlie Quigley doing anything requiring backbone is absurd.The thought of him in control of Golden Square is even more so.

“I’m on my way to the Magistrate to defend your Ma. Will you come?” She knows he won’t. Looking at him standing there in his wonky wig and pastel clothes pretending to have any authority is hilarious. Lydia has babied him all his life and as a result he is a baby still. Though they had been children together in Golden Square, only one of them is now an adult. _Men never have to face real cruelty._ Charlotte thinks. _We can be born under the same roofs as them, and yet they never see our world though they may stand in the midst of it._

“My mother's brought her fate upon herself and I've no choice but to take the reins.”  
  
Lord, Emily Lacey has really got him wrapped around her cunt.Well, she may have fed him lines that sound like a grown man, but even she can’t make him sound sure of the words.  
  
“Where are the girls?” he asks.

“Out. On my orders.”   
  
"I don't know what you're doing here, but I want you gone,” he demands weakly.

“What natural authority,” she says, voice dripping in sarcasm. She pats him in the chest like the child he is. “Your mother will be most impressed.”  
  
This really is a show she wishes she had the time to savor properly. But she doesn’t. She shoves her way between them and leaves them to do as they please in the house.If Charles incurs his mother’s wrath, so much the better for her. Lydia will be even more eager to see her as a daughter if she thinks her son has set against her.And what a strike that would be.

The walk from Golden Square to the jailhouse is not a particularly long one and Charlotte lets herself enjoy the cool air of the late morning as she makes her way down the cobbled streets through neighborhoods of ever decreasing opulence.Even in her fine silks, she finds herself more comfortable surrounded by the people she was raised with.Shopkeepers, tradesmen, and whores.  
  
She turns a corner near Covent Garden and is surprised to see her sister walking towards her.

“Lucy!” she calls out to her. Lydia Quigley will have to wait a while. She needs desperately to tell someone what she is about.  
  
“Charlotte!” Lucy envelops her in a hug and Charlotte lets herself enjoy the rare experience of genuine affection.  
  
“Come on Sprat, let’s sit a while.I have so much I need to tell you.”  
  
They go to the nearby tavern to talk, and as much as Charlotte would like a drink, they order tea instead.  
  
“How are you Charlotte?” Lucy asks.  
  
Charlotte takes a while to consider how to answer this.She is…nothing.There is barely a moment of the day where she is not acting some part, playing some game. Not a moment where she can breathe in peace except for the rare nights she is blissfully alone in her bed.

“I'm her creature every minute of the clock,” she says finally, "Guessing her bidding, working my wits like a…vile, unscrupled whore.” She takes a drink, as if to wash the words from her mouth.No amount of living in finery will wash away the stench of what Lydia Quigley had condemned her family to the moment she first sold their mother. 

“She must dote on you.” 

“I edge towards her secrets.” Charlotte sighs, “One day she'll let down her guard. When I'm done, Mrs. Quigley will be dust and ash.”Charlotte can only hope that she herself remains solid when that time comes. That she will not have to burn herself with the bawd. She can almost feel bits of herself disintegrate to that very dust each time she bends to Quigley's will. 

"But she's in jail. You can leave."  The sincerity in Lucy’s voice is almost painful. 

“She'll never stay in jail; you know how it'll go. I’ll not leave. Not now.” 

“What compels you, Charlotte?”  
  
Charlotte is struck by how naive Lucy remains workings of their world.After everything. 

“The world is so misshapen,” she tells her sister. “I must make a corner of it right.” She doesn’t want to talk about her game. She is exhausted by living it. She wants to hear of her family. “What of you?” 

“Ma thinks you've betrayed her. Will you talk to her?”  
  
Charlotte scoffs, but she can feel her eyes welling up with tears for the loss of a relationship that had never once been what it should be.So much for calming her mind with talk of family.  
  
“Will you talk to her?” Lucy asks.  
  
“And say what?” She won’t be the one to make the first move.It breaks her heart but her mother had abandoned her to the law.She had condemned Daniel Marney along with Charlotte and had thrown Emily Lacey to the wolves. No. If her Ma wanted reconciliation, she would have to be the one to start for once.  
  
“Then talk to Pa.” Lucy pleads with her, “He won't come home.”  
  
Charlotte shakes her head to rid self of any lingering tears. “Poor man suffers her like scrofula. You should leave too. You're all grown up, Sprat.”  
  
Lucy looks unsure.  
  
“I’ll talk to Pa as soon as I am able,” she assures her sister before standing to go and embracing her again.  
  
Charlotte wishes desperately to stay, but feels it is time to on her way to Quigley.Hopefully the woman has suffered waiting.Though, not so much that she resents Charlotte for it. Her timing is so important now.Let Quigley stay long enough in the jail cell to feel what she could lose, then show up as the brilliant angel of salvation.She only hopes she has calculated correctly.  
  
She finds Justice Hunt at his desk.He looks up as she enters.

“I am here to see Mrs. Quigley,” she tells him. “What is her fine?”  
  
“Ah, M-miss W-w-ells,” he stammers, standing. “She has been fined f-five hundred p-p-pounds.You may go t-through to the jailhouse to speak with her about arranging it’s p-p-payment.Or if she cannot pay, she will remain where she is for six months.”  
  
She turns and exits his chambers.  
  
The stench of the jailhouse nearly overwhelms her as she enters it.It reeks of human waste and burnt flesh.  
  
“You came.” Quigley flies from the bench towards Charlotte.She sounds relived and a little surprised at the sight of her.  
  
Charlotte secretly enjoys how wretched she looks, dirty, wig-less, and behind bars.If only she would stay there to rot. But that’s not her plan. 

“Of course. You did as much for me.” _Mask on._ She thinks. She hands the guard money to talk to Quigley outside of the common holding cell. “Private, if you please.”

“Charlotte Wells.” Violet Cross, one of Nancy’s girls, calls to her. “Curse you to a prison ship and seven years hard labor.”  
  
She’s clutching her hand where a “T” for “thief” has been burned.The origin of the burning flesh smell no doubt. Charlotte feels sick with sympathy for her.She hates that she cannot assure the girl that she is not Quigley’s. But she had work to do. She sends Violet a look that she hopes at least conveys some of her thoughts, and then turns her attentions back to the bawd.

The two women sit at the guard’s table just outside the cell.

“The fine is immense,” Charlotte leans forward. “Tell me where you stow your funds.” 

“Will you tell my son I'm here?”

“He knows. “ Charlotte says, driving the wedge in. “Charles is at yours with Emily Lacey, on what mission I know not.”

“He and his doxy have emptied my pockets.” Quigley leans forwards, dropping her voice to a barely audible whisper. “I cannot pay the fine,” she says.

“You must have benefactors somewhere.”This woman has her girls sucking the law and the highest ranks of the land.Surely someone will pay?

“No, as you can see, I'm surrounded by kind friends, all clamoring to help me.”

“Is this self-pity? It's a fine you face, not the noose. Stop stewing and tell me what to do.”

Lydia smiles. “A woman's power is in her secrets. I’ve collected them like jewels and now they'll keep me safe.” she pauses, looking down, thinking.“Lady Fitz,” she says, meeting Charlotte’s eyes. “Isabella Fitzwilliam, Heiress of Blayne. The finest jewel of all.” 

“Do you bleed her? Like a surgeon?” Charlotte has to force down her disgust at the realization that it will be her that will have to do the bleeding. 

“I could ruin her with one sentence,”Quigley tells her, looking beyond pleased with herself for the fact.  
  
Charlotte is shocked. What could Lydia Quigley know that would make a member of the aristocracy pay a five-hundred pound jail fine for a bawd? She has always known that Quigley deals in secrets, but she can not begin to imagine what secret could be so expensive.


	3. Episode 1, Part 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'll probably be back tomorrow to edit this more. I just wanted to get the end of Episode 1 up for you all. 
> 
> Finally, we meet Lady Isabella Fitzwilliam.

It is late afternoon when Charlotte returns to Golden Square.She avoids the other girls who are entertaining culls in the main drawing room and goes to her room.If she is to walk into the home of a Marquess, she is going to have to change.The dress she is in may be fine for Soho, but she would look as out of place next to aristocracy in it as one of her Ma’s girls would look at Golden Square. She searches through the assortment of gowns she has been provided with before finding one she thinks appropriate and calling in two of the maids to help her dress and fix her hair which has gone blowzy after her day. When they finish and leave her, she sits once again before the mirror to touch up her harlot’s mask.Even if her dress is fine and her hair immaculate, the rouge on her cheeks will plainly mark her for what she is.    


That evening, Charlotte takes the carriage out of London to the home of the woman Quigley had named. Even after her life in St James with Sir George, the opulence of the manor they pull up in front of stuns her. This level of wealth and status is not somewhere she has tread before.Sir George may have been a baronet, but true aristocracy is something else entirely. 

Charlotte knocks and waits to be answered, self consciously touching her hair to make sure everything is still in place.She tries to tamp down the anxiety rising in her throat. _This is just another step of the game._ She tells herself. _You can do this._

The door to the front hall opens and she addresses the man inside, “Miss Charlotte Wells,” she says, for the first time in her life, a bit self-conscious of her low-class accent. “To see the lady of the house.”

She follows a series of footmen through several rooms until at last a pair of double doors is opened, revealing a small party of aristocrats.   
  
“Miss Charlotte Wells.” she hears herself announced.  
  
Charlotte breaths deeply to try to calm her racing mind and still the pounding in her chest. _Mask on._ She is here to do a job. To bleed a woman she knows nothing about and yet feels a sense of pity for. Another of the countless lives threatened with ruin by the schemes of Lydia Quigley.

Charlotte watches the faces of the aristocrats in the room.The women all look different shades of horrified at her presence there. The men just look like they want to bed her.And so her reputation precedes her, even into the highest echelons of society. _Lydia Quigley may have her girls fucking the gentry, but this_ , she thinks, _is not somewhere even the bawd can move with ease._

One of the finely dressed ladies steps apart from the crowd and faces her.

Charlotte dips a low curtsey but does not enter the room further.  
  
The woman is on a larger scale than the ladies in the room, nearly as tall as a man. Taller, if one takes into account her wig. Her poise denotes her to be the Lady of the house, the one Charlotte is here to threaten 500 pounds out of, but her face gives away an element of interest Charlotte had not expected.Then again, a whore showing up to a party uninvited must be diverting.

“The notorious CW” she says, “Have we not all followed your exploits in the Grub Street Press? A string of keepers, their fortunes squandered, a lover murdered in the park?” She turns to the room, "Who insults me by inviting this brazen strumpet into my home?” she looks down at a red-haired man who lounges on a chaise.“Is this your mischief?”

Now Charlotte is the one intrigued.A performer can spot another and something about the woman tells Charlotte that she is not as easy in her surroundings as she wishes to appear to be.She’s acting to the room. A trick Charlotte knows all too well. 

The man must be Lady Fitz’s brother, the Marquess of Blayne.Quigley had given her a cursory overview of what she would be walking into. He stares at her, the same lust shared by other men written on his face, though, combined with an amusement that Charlotte cannot help but be disquieted by.

“Mm… For once, I cannot claim it. Come.” he motions her forward, “Let me see the beauty that sent—” he seems to be thinking, “George Howard, to an early grave.”

Charlotte walks into the room, aware that every eye is still trained on her.She addresses the Marquess. “Your business may be slander, Sir, but mine—” she turns to face Lady Fitz, “Is with the Lady.”

Lady Fits smirks down at her brother.“Well, I'll hear it,” she replies. Not so much to Charlotte herself as to the room at large. The theatre of the rich.

The Marquess stands as if he is to accompany them, but his sister cuts him off. 

“Miss Wells and I will take a turn,” she says and turns towards Charlotte, putting the man at her back.

They walk together from the room, and as soon as they are in the small library, out of earshot of any of the party, Lady Fitz stops their walking and turns to Charlotte.

“What do you want?” she asks warily, the bravado she had been showing a moment before all but slipping away.  
  
Any enjoyment Charlotte is taking at the novel experience is brought to jarring stop. Her purpose here is to twist the arm of this woman until she breaks.She turns to face her target and puts her hands on her hips, bracing herself for what now must be said.

“My current benefactor, Mrs. Quigley, sends me in her hour of need.” The words taste bitter on her tongue.

“So that is it. How dare you come?!”

 _Because I have no choice.Because as much as I hate it, I need her out of jail where I can manipulate her into ruin.But to do that I need to threaten you with the same._ So many words rush to Charlotte’s mind and she can say none of them.

"Her situation is quite desperate.” She says aloud.

“I've read about it in the evening rag. A stench of crime and kidnap. How much does she want?” Isabella searches Charlotte's face as if to try and make out what part she plays in Quigley’s games. Or how much she herself might know of whatever the secret she holds is. 

Charlotte pauses before answering.The demand still making her sick in its exorbitance.

“Five hundred pounds. Tomorrow.”

Lady Fitz’s jaw actually drops and she lowers her voice to a whisper “My _brother_ holds my purse,” she says,the look on her face is somewhere between horror and terror, “I cannot get it.”

“She's pressed me to threaten you.” Charlotte hates these words as she says them. 

Something in Lady Fitz’s demeanor changes ever so slightly. The curiosity back on her face.“Why?” she asks, “Does she hold your secret too?” 

_She holds the cause of my entire life._ Charlotte thinks, and her will breaks. 

“Forgive me,” she says quietly, turning to go. She has no idea what she will do about the money, but she cannot do this.   
  
She makes it a few steps before the lady speaks again.

“Perhaps we courtiers are not unlike you courtesans.” Charlotte turns back towards her a degree. “Our lives, like yours,” Lady Fitz continues, “Are a constant game of sham.”  
  
She’s actually admitting to the very thing Charlotte had suspected her of from the first.And for a moment, Charlotte breaks from her own act, and drops her mask.

“Do you ever long to break from that pretense?” she asks, wondering if their lives really are not so different after all.Beyond the wealth and prestige, they are both of them dancing on a tightrope of beguilement and charade.  
  
Lady Fitz looks down and smiles before meeting Charlotte’s eyes again, a spark of fire in her own. “If I broke free and spoke my heart, the sea would bubble, the sky would turn red, and London would tumble into dust.”

Charlotte’s heart rate quickens. _Lord. Who is this woman?_ she wonders. _What secrets does she hold._ Aloud she only says, “I should like to witness that.” And she would. _Dust and ash_ she thinks. _What I wish to make of Quigley._ A small seed of hope blooms in Charlotte’s chest.She had come here to do harm on Lydia Quigley’s behalf. But maybe, in the midst of doing that woman’s bidding, she had found an ally against her. 

“Izzy?” The Marquess appears at the door to the library and

“Say nothing.” Lady Fitz whispers. “Come to me at breakfast.”  
  
Charlotte lets out a breath she hadn’t realized she had been holding. She has what she came for. Or, she will have by tomorrow morning. She watches as the Marquess leads Lady Fitz by her arm back to the party and something about the action strikes Charlotte as odd. Usually, a man would offer his arm to a lady to escort her.But the Marquess seems to be moving Lady Fitz almost as someone would move a piece of furniture.  
  
As the door to the parlor closes behind the two aristocrats, Charlotte feels she is leaving this house with more questions than she had upon entering it, but also more hope. 

As she reenters London, the night black around the carriage, Charlotte is struck with a very great desire to not return to Golden Square quite yet.Charlie and Emily might still be there and by this time the girls should be in full swing entertaining culls and that is not a scene she wishes to deal with just now.Anne can play mistress for all she cares. Or Emily, if the girl is still there. She instructs the driver to take her to the tavern. She will heed Lucy’s request and talk to her Pa.  


The coachman actually refuses to enter Covent Garden and Charlotte is left to walk from Soho to the familiar tavern.She enters the tavern just in time to see her Pa getting socked in the face by a young man.  


“Pa!” she cries as he falls from a blow. She pushes through the onlookers to get to where he lays on the ground and helps him to one of the tavern benches.

“Did your ma send you?”

“Lucy did. You were looking great, Pa.” she laughs and he joins her.

“I’ll bleed all over your beautiful dress.”

“I don't care,” she says, hugging him.  


They order food and beer and sit in a corner to talk.  
  
“Why aren’t you at home Pa?” Charlotte asks him.  
  
“You cannot know how much I want to be home Charlotte,” he says. “But I cannot sit by an watch your Ma give up every bit of love she has left to hatred. It’s twisting her. She sees viciousness and deceit everywhere she looks. Even in me. ”  
  
She does know. She would like nothing more than to go home.To actually have her family with her and happy and safe.But as long as Lydia Quigley plays her games of kidnap and murder, no girl in London is safe. Harlot or virgin.  
  
“She thinks I’ve betrayed her too.” Charlotte can feel tears welling in her eyes for the second time that day. “But I’m going to end this, Pa. This poison that has been eating at our family. Quigley’s reign of terror on the girls of this town. That’s what I’m aiming to do in Golden Square. It’s why I’m suckling at the teat of Dame Death. Playing whore to her every whim. I’m waiting, to strike her down. Permanently. ”  
  
“Be careful, my girl. You’re playing a dangerous game.”  
  
Charlotte nods but says nothing. They talk a while longer about anything and nothing and it feels good to just sit and feel loved. When a distant bell tolls eleven, Charlotte stands to go.She’s dead tired from her day and without the coach she will have to walk back to Golden Square.  
  
“I could accompany you,” her Pa offers.“I don’t much like the thought of you going that far in the dark alone.”  
  
“I’ll be fine Pa.” She embraces him, then heads out into the dark.  
  
Charlotte walks quickly and reaches Golden Square in near record time.  As she approaches the house, she sees Emily Lacey leaving, heading in the opposite direction.Either the girl doesn’t see her or she chooses not to. 

Charlotte discards her cloak at the door and walks quietly to the parlor where, despite the late hour, she can still hear the voices of girls and culls. The girls lounge about the large parlor hall in a state of disarray that Charlotte thinks she has never seen anywhere in the house before.Not even in bedchambers. They seem almost like real people for the first time.

_They suffer too._ Shethinks. _They’re prisoners here. Pampered and fitted out in style, but locked in and robbed of all they earn. I will free them, too._

She climbs the stairs to her room, letting herself in and reveling in the bliss of being without either a cull or Mrs. Quigley to whore out her emotions to.  
  
Charlotte steps out of her shoes and calls the same two maids who helped her dress that evening into her chambers to undo the process. They remove her gown and unpin her stomacher, returning both to where they had been stored. Her gown skirt, hoops, pockets, and petticoats are likewise removed and set aside with care. When she is down to her stays, she dismisses them.Alone, she pulls the ribbon from where it is knotted on her back and the corset with well-practiced fingers, letting it fall on the floor. Her stockings and garters meet a similar fate.Barefoot and in nothing but her shift she sits, for the third time that day, before her mirror. 

As she begins the work of unpinning her hair, she realizes that she never quite put her mask back on after she had dropped it when she asked Lady Fitz if she ever longed to break from the sham of her life. She had been too enthralled with the woman’s answer to think what she herself was revealing.Her Pa’s words echo in her head. _You’re playing a dangerous game._ She is fully aware of that. One wrong move could end it all in flames. And not flames that will burn Quigley.One misplaced act of trust and the illusion would fall.She knows exactly how dangerous letting her mask slip can be.And yet she had dropped it completely tonight. She knows nothing of this woman and yet something in her urges her to trust her.And trust is not something Charlotte Wells gives out easily. The hope she can see in her eyes, even in the dim candlelight, scares her almost more than the emptiness that morning had. 

She shuts her eyes and inhales.When she opens them again, she can feel the mask settling back over her face.She will be careful.She will play her game calculatingly.She might yet find an ally in Lady Fitz, but she will not let herself rush blindly to trust. 

Whatever her resolve to caution, however, Charlotte still falls asleep that night with a faint glimmer of hope resting on her soul.


	4. Episode 2, Part 1

Charlotte wakes with the sun.An old habit from her childhood that she has never managed to break no matter how much leisure her situation at the time had allowed.She lies in her bed, tracing the patters on the ceiling with here eyes as the room slowly fills with the first rays of morning light.It strikes her, suddenly, that she has absolutely no idea at what time Lady Fitz takes breakfast.She hand't asked.Idiot.

There is nothing to be done about it now.She will have to trust her best guess.She throws off her covers, shivering in the cool air as she leaves the warmth of her blankets.She again dresses with care, though not as finely as she had last night.She's made her impression and she'll not try to look what she is not.This part of the game is almost complete. She thinks, pulling a perfect curl over her shoulder. Once Quigley is freed from her prison cell, her real work can begin.

The sight that greets Charlotte downstairs is more shocking in the day than it had been last night. Golden Square is a mess. The usually pristine hall is littered in the remnants of what seems to have been a rather impromptu party on the part of the girls.Cards, food, drink and any number of articles of clothing are strewn about around girls and culls who appear to have simply fallen asleep, half dressed, on the sofas and chairs. What appears to be an ivory carving of a penis sits on one of the tables and Charlotte tries very hard not to think about where that came from. She gives the room one last glance and leaves the house No doubt there will be some shade of hell to pay for the scene inside when Mrs. Quigley returns to Golden Square.

Charlotte spends the carriage ride to the Blayne Estate trying to calm her nerves.She tells herself that the hard part is over.Now all she has to do is collect. 

She is again led through a series of empty rooms. Head up, eyes forward, mask on. This should not take long.

Both Lady Isabella and the Marquess look up as she is shown into the breakfast parlor.

"I'm interrupting," Charlotte says. 

"Nonsense," replies Lady Isabella. "You must join us."

This is another stage. Charlotte thinks. It's only the Marquess here and still she's acting.Why?

"I've already eaten, thank you," Charlotte says. She hasn't. She'd left Golden Square as soon as she was dressed, her mind too full of her task to think of breakfast.She prays her stomach does not betray her lie.

"She came for silver, not spice bread," the Marquess says, pointing to her, but sneering at Lady Isabella. Something in his manner of talking sets Charlotte's teeth on edge and she is reminded of how he had steered his sister the night before. When he stands and walks over to a low set of drawers, Charlotte leaves the doorway and walk closer to where Lady Isabella is still sitting at the table.

Charlotte meets her eye inquiringly, cocking her head to one side.Why are you so on guard?She hopes her face asks.

The other woman merely looks down at her hands. Charlotte can see her clench her jaw for one moments, but no more.

The Marquess walks back to the table, placing himself between the two women.As Charlotte reaches to take the 500 pound note from his hand, he pulls it back and sets it on the table, covering it with his fingers.

"I propose a little game," he says, stepping into Charlotte's personal space and making the hairs on the back of her neck stand on edge, "You tell me where my sister's money is destined, and we shall discover if Isabella has been telling fibs."

Charlotte looks over the Marquess' shoulder to Lady Isabella.This is bad. Please God let her be quick witted enough to play this game with me.

"Humor him please, Miss Wells, or he'll be impossible." Lady Isabella's words are light but there is something in her face that makes Charlotte uneasy.Something that hints at fear.A constant game of sham, she thinks, recalling Lady Isabella's words from the night before.They're playing it now.

"Very well," she tells the Marquess, pausing to consider how to continue. "The money is to pay a debt," she decides. 

"Oh, very good, very good," he say his tone disturbingly light. She thinks he will had her the note then, but instead he continues, "What kind?"

Charlotte again looks to Lady Isabella.

"He makes the game seem dangerous." she says. "I would rather be rolling dice."

Thank heavens. Dice. Charlotte has to stop herself from audibly sighing with relief.

"Surely not Hazard, Lady Isabella." She says, smiling. "Not when you already have this debt to pay."

"Is that your answer, Hazard?"

Charlotte meets the man's eyes, "It is."

"What a pair of colluding pixies you are!" the Marquess exclaims.

"He finds it hard to believe that I lose so often."

"He has not seen me play."Charlotte wonders if they are all still talking about dice. 

"No matter, ladies.My sister's luckless at dice, lucky in love."

What an odd statement. Charlotte thinks.Aloud she only says, "I do hope you can forgive this imposition."

"Of course," relies Lady Isabella.

And with that Charlotte turns and leaves. She can feel the predatory glint from Marquess' eyes follow her from the room.The unsettling feeling does not leave her until she hears the heavy front doors pulled shut behind her.

It is a relief to be back in the carriage.To sit alone and not have to see or be seen by anyone. To not have to play. She realizes as the carriage pulls out of the circular drive that her heart has been pounding. The ride from the Blayne's house to London seems shorter than it had the night before.This time, the coachman does drive her through Covent Garden and to the jailhouse.She exists the carriage, telling the driver to wait for her. She will be returning with his mistress shortly.


End file.
